Re: sameas.org

The mapping between files/directories and instances/classes
is a natural one, and allows you to use your file system intuition
when thinking about classes.

The mKE browser (see http://mkrmke.org/) translates a
"hierarchy outline" into an ontology, or a file system.

The mKR language used to "talk" to mKE provides a convenient
notation for doing the searches that you mention here.  The mKR
equivalent of your query "Kiwi a bird" is

    Kiwi isa* ?;

In file system terms, this question literally means to start at
"Kiwi", which can be either a file or directory, and walk all
paths up to "/", the root directory of the file system.

Dick McCullough
http://mkrmke.org
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sherman Monroe 
  To: richard.hancock@3kbo.com 
  Cc: Azamat ; SW-forum ; public-lod@w3.org ; Chris Wallace 
  Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 7:32 PM
  Subject: Re: sameas.org


  Chris,


  On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 6:46 PM, <richard.hancock@3kbo.com> wrote:

    Hi Azamat,

    one thing I would like to be able to do is enter a search query similar to
    the following:

    "Kiwi a bird"

    using the "a" to indicate "rdf:type" and to substitute for "bird" the
    classes known to represent that concept. The search would then be made
    with the substituted list of classes specifying the entity type.


  This would indeed be a better UI, however, disambiguation will be challenging in the wild. Any UI based on state-of-the-art tech will require the user to disambiguate. One could say that lod.openlinksw.com and razorbase are browsers which encourage user to disambiguate her way to the desired results.
   
  I've prepared some slides [1] which presents the file system metaphor as a useful approach for linked data browsers. I think it offers a nice alternative to the more natural UI you're describing.

  [1] http://www.slideshare.net/guest02493a3/razorbase-examples-part-4

  -sherman